Sunday, January 17, 2010

Reading is sexy XXX

(image Courtesan reading a love letter (Edo) via this site) It occurs to me that this is not a well-advised post title, but, c'est la vie.1. A Whistling Woman by A.S. Byatt. This is the fourth and final (?) book in a cycle by Byatt, completing the quartet which began with The Virgin in the Garde, Still Life, and Babel Tower. This is a rich world Byatt has created, around the life of the North Yorkshire Potter family, and red-headed, independent, intellectual Frederica Potter in particular, during the 50s and 60s. The first novel is intertwined with a play about Queen Elizabeth I being performed for Elizabeth II's coronation. The second is intertwined with the story of Van Gogh. The third is intertwined with a battle over censorship, freedom and pornography with a character's novel Babeltower. The fourth is rich in symbolism, but does not have as much of a dualistic structure. The character Agatha's fairytale story Flight North begins the novel, and the story of its publication is a thread in the novel, but plays a far more subtle role than say, Babeltower in Babel Tower. Ironically, now that I've claimed the final novel is less dualistic, one of the major themes is the syzygy in the Gnostic sense (a male-female pair of aeons), in the Jungian sense of archetypal pairings, and in the zoological sense (and the discussion of sexual versus asexual reproduction) - not to omit, the on-going story of the twins John Ottokar and Paul/Zag (and his rock band Zag and th Syzygy Zy-goats) and the discussion of whether monozygotic twins are an example of asexual reproduction with the one twin as both mother and genetic pair of the other. Other major themes include blood, birds, mind & body, reproduction, mirrors and light, Manichaeism and the Biblical stories of Abraham and Issaac, and that of Joshua. The novel, as you may have gathered, takes on a lot: mental illness, religion and cults, psycotherapy, changing role of women in society and evolution of the actual family unit, duty, media and television in particular, love of knowledge, love, domestic violence and counter culture. Frederica and her son Leo are still living in South London with Agatha and her daughter Saskia. Byatt makes various allusions to The Golden Notebook and the concept of free women, or unmarried women with children sharing a home to share child-rearing duties. Frederica is still seeing computer scientist and Quaker John O., but soon he accepts a job at the University of North Yorkshire (where several characters from previous novels work including Marcus, Frederica's brother). Frederica is convinced by Edmund Wilkie to host a television show about ideas called Through the Looking glass. This is a way for Byatt to weave in all sorts of knowledge, whether it be neurology, sociology, art history to even things not found in universities, like astrology, along with the imagery of Lewis Caroll (not without its own binary pairs). Meanwhile, the Quaker Spirit's Tigers (including psychologist Elvet Gander from Babel Tower) merge with Gideon Farrar (Still Life)'s Children of Joy, and we watch in increasing dred as the budding cult falls under the sway of Manichaen Joshua Lamb (or Ramsden), a charismatic man whose mental health was shattered when his father acts on the belief he was commanded by God to sacrifice his family. Joshua survives, his family does not. The group contains other religious characters and one ethologist from the previous novels and centres around Lucy Nighby, a woman battered by her husband, who may, or may not have attacked both he and their children - again the bloody image of sacrifice of children. At UNY, biologist Luk Lysgaard-Peacock is in love with Jacqueline Winwar (who in turn loves Marcus, who may love Ruth, who is embedded in the Children of Joy). Gerard Wijnnobel is organizing a conference on Mind and Body (another means of Byatt to express her love of knowledge) while a growing encampment called the Anti-University of counter-culture student protesters, plans their response. Byatt deftly weaves all her strands together, making a strong argument for interdisciplinary, unfettered celebration of knowledge, for real people living true, if messy lives, and for independence.

One could easily write a doctorate on these books. Consider the symbolism of names alone (Marcus and his mystical, instinctive approach to mathematics, compassionate Ruth, Lady Wijnnobel is née Eva Selkett, JoshuaLamb, ElvetGander, Daniel with his foresight and tests of faith, Lucy Nighby who makes a religion of light, Lyssgard-Peacock, and even Avram Snitkin). I'll refrain from attempting to summarize such a richly-woven a web with a few lines. The cycle as a whole is both long and heavy, but very rewarding, and I highly recommend them.

2. Noh - The Classical Theater. Performing Arts of Japan IV by Yasuo Nakamura, introduction by Earle Ernst. No one is going to read this post and then read this book, if for no other reason than its obscurity. I found it in a used bookstore, years ago. I would have prefered Bunraku: The Puppet Theater, but this is what I found, and I do have a thing about masks. The author varies between claims that the ancient theatre is in fact avant guarde or whether it is so slow and stylized to be undoubtedly boring. The history of Noh, in excruciating detail, is likewise a mix of the undoubtedly boring with some real gems of ideas and stories. The introduction vivdly presents Tokyo, immediately after WWII, where Prof. Ernst was ironically tasked with censorship in name of the democracy, to prevent the feudalistic from re-appearing. He recognizes art, rather than nostalgia for neofeudalism. The author, mathematician-Noh expert Nakamura, relates the history of Noh from 200 BC to (his) modern day, the training of actors, the masks, music, sets and costumes (down to the socks). Just when it might get boring, he explains the difference between dramatic and supernatural parts as akin to the difference between living in three and four dimensions (with a metaphor that could have be straight out of Flatland), or a juicy story about an emperor's advisor who became addicted to Noh, or a love affair between a shogun and young Noh apprentice.

3. From the Notebooks - The Unwritten Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Stephany Aulenback, John Beckman, Marc Bojanowski, Judy Budnitz, Ian Caldwell, Rachel Ingalls, Sam Lipsyte, Tom Lombardi, Carey Mercer, Lydia Miller, Sigrid Nunez, Michelle Orange, Salvador Plascencia, Matthew Sharpe, Miriam Toews, Jincy Willett, Diane Williams This is of course a McSweeney's project (issue 22). F. Scott Fitzgerald kept a notebook. It contained, amongst other things, 32 more-or-less wild story ideas. McSweeney's gathered authors together and asked them to select one. Everyone wanted "girl and giraffe" so they include two stories on that theme, and many others (i.e. "the man who killed the idea of tanks in England - his after life" or "Fairy who fell for a wax dummy"). I enjoyed these various stories very much, though some more than others. Stand-outs include Plascencia's "Returned" wherein the ocean follows a girl, Lombardi's "The Bear" ("Lois and the bear hiding in the Yellowstone") and Sharpe's "Bert as a Boy".

McSweeney's say they leave the unselected ideas as an exercise to the reader. So, I assign you the task of writing a story of what I deem the most promising, unselected Fitzgeraldian idea:A tree, finding water, pierces a roof and solves a mystery